The Midterms Mean Civil War

Now that the midterms are over, the DNC and GOP are tearing themselves apart from the inside. Welcome to America Uncovered, I'm Chris Chappell. So first, congratulations to the Democrats. They won one of the biggest midterm landslides in modern history. They flipped the House. They flipped the Senate. They flipped Texas. Champagne, confetti, victory speeches. A party united, marching forward together as one. What's that Shelley? They're already fighting, well, that took a day. Let's start with the scoreboard, because it was a rout of the GOP. It wasn't just a blue wave. I saw someone refer to it as a blue cockay. Okay. Blech. As of this recording, Democrats won 54 Senate seats to the Republicans 44, with Alaska and Mississippi still being too close to call. They flipped seven Republican seats, including Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, both Carolinas, Maine, and Texas. And before the confetti even hit the floor, longtime Democratic strategist James Carvel was predicting that the party's civil war would start the very next day. It certainly has for Republicans, but I'll get to that in a bit. So if the Democrats just won this big, why is everyone acting like the party is in crisis? Because it kind of is. In NBC News' final poll before the election, just 29% of voters had a favorable view of the Democratic Party. So most Americans do not like the party they just handed both houses of Congress to. That means voters didn't fall in love with the Democrats on Tuesday, so much as they broke up with the Republicans. So less of a mandate and more of a restraining order. What this means is the Democrats have a lot of power and no real message. What's their platform? We hate Trump? I mean, at this point I couldn't even tell you who would be a Democratic frontrunner for 2028. But you know who does have a message? The socialists. Medicare for all, universal childcare, no corporate PAC money, cut off military aid to Israel. Whatever you think of it, it fits on a bumper sticker. And it's landing with young voters. A CNBC poll found that almost half of young Americans view democratic socialism positively. And that is translating into election victories. Two of America's biggest cities and the nation's capital are now run by DSA candidates. And at least six candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America just won House seats. A record. Right now, there are exactly two DSA members in the House, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. In January, that number more than triples. And these six didn't just win. Two of them got there by knocking off established Democrats in the primaries. One beat a 15-term incumbent in Denver. Another beat the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Now the DSA is not a political party, you won't see DSA on your ballot. It's an organization that runs its own candidates inside Democratic primaries on the Democratic ballot line. But the problem is, the young American love of the DSA is very limited. Zoom out to the whole country and the picture flips. According to an NBC poll, right before the election, ...most Americans continue to distrust socialism and democratic socialists. So you have a young, passionate, loud minority versus a larger establishment with no real message. Are either of those winning tickets long term? And that's the tension. The six DSA winners, all of them won in reliably blue districts. The Democrats who flipped Texas and Kansas did it talking about health care and housing, not socialism. The problem is both sides are going to look at the midterm victory and see proof that they were right. The leadership isn't hiding where it stands. Here's Hakeem Jeffries, probably the next Speaker of the House, back in August. Well, listen, I don't support the DSA agenda as has been articulated by the DSA itself. And former Congresswoman Cherry Bustos, who used to run the Democrats' House campaign arm, told the Free Press that she's hoping the majority is big enough to make the DSA irrelevant so they and Jeffries don't have to worry about the crazies. The crazies. Party unity, everybody. The new members, meanwhile, are not exactly lining up to kiss Jeffrey's ring. Here's the part that should worry Democratic leadership. As of now, not one of the six new DSA members has committed to voting for Hakeem Jeffries Speaker. Pennsylvania's Chris Rabb said, I'm nobody's rubber stamp. Colorado's Melat Kiros told Axios back in July she won't vote for any Democrat leader who takes corporate PAC money, which, by the way, would rule out Jeffries. And DSA champion Hassan Piker? He says he wants Bernie Sanders. Piker supporting a Jew. What a time of wonders. New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James is even making threats, warning the DSA, you target Hakeem Jeffries, you mess with me. Democratic law enforcement threatening Democratic Congress. What a time to be alive. AOC, meanwhile, has endorsed Jeffries for Speaker. So just to recap, in the new Democratic Party, AOC is the establishment. But is Bustos right? That the crazies are too small to matter? Well, let me do something I know the DSA candidates would love. Compare them to Republicans. Back in 2009, the Tea Party shows up angry about spending and bailouts. And the Republican establishment figures it can ride that energy back to power. And in 2010 it works. But then in 2014, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the number two Republican in the House, loses his primary to a Tea Party economics professor nobody had heard of. And the face of the Republican Party changed. The Tea Party gave us Ted Cruz, who looked like he could become the presidential contender in 2016. That is until, oops, here comes MAGA. Poor Jeb Bush. I wonder where he is now. The point is, a small disruptive force can easily swallow up the establishment. And that's what the DNC faces ahead of 2028. If they have no message, someone will fill the vacuum. And it's usually whoever shows up with the most energy, not whoever has the best ideas. The Republican establishment thought it could harness the Tea Party. Instead, the Tea Party harnessed the Republican Party, and then Trump harnessed them all. Now, the Democratic establishment is making the same bet with the DSA. Take the energy, take the votes, but keep the radicals in the back row. But the old guard has a 29% problem. And the Socialists have something the old guard doesn't. A story young people actually want to hear. Even if it's a story that everywhere it's been tried ends up with someone else's money running out. The crazy thing is, the Free Press reported in September that the DSA is having its own civil war between pragmatists who want to win elections and purists who don't want to compromise their Marxist principles. It's like a Russian nesting doll of civil war. But voters didn't hire Democrats last week, they fired Republicans. Which brings me to the Republicans, and oh boy, are they facing their own civil war of massive proportions. You want to talk about crazies? There's a massive blame game going on, and it's getting ugly. There are even calls for Trump to resign. In fact, Republican political activist James Fishback said Trump should resign when he was on the Alex Jones show. Donald Trump has led Republicans to the worst electoral defeat in 50 years. He should resign the presidency tomorrow. Which of course would then make J.D. Vance the unelected president of the United States. Right wing podcaster Oren MacIntyre is predicting that's what might happen. Trump resigns and then gets pardoned by his own vice president. Somewhere Gerald Ford is nodding along. And the funniest part? Back in August, James Carville predicted Trump would do exactly this. When James Carville and Alex Jones are predicting the same plan for your presidency, you might be having a bad week. Which brings us to the Vanguard. Is that sports protective gear? Yes, for the crotch. It's also the idea that a coalition of Groypers, Christian Nationalists, National Conservatives and New Right Influencers, post-liberals, as well as bot accounts, are aligning themselves behind J.D. Vance to stage a coup against Trump. Which sounds insane. First of all, the Groypers hate Vance for having an Indian wife. They're charming people. But I'll take you through the theory. What else would we be doing with our time? Touching grass? Vance used to be a vocal Trump critic. I think there's a chance if I feel like Trump has a really good chance of winning, that I might have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton. But you know, once upon a time, Trump and Rubio didn't get along. Little Marco, little Marco. But after the. Blue Kake, J.D. Vance posts this long, probably AI-written tweet about why the Republicans lost so badly. He says the main reasons for the loss were the Iran War, cost of living, not putting America first, and Israel. Okay, that certainly doesn't seem groundbreaking. We've all heard those were issues leading up to the midterms. The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh said this may be the most thorough and honest diagnosis. But can you trust Walsh? He works for the Jews! We've also heard all those claims about the Jews leading up to the midterms. So is Vance Tweet a call for a coup? Do you say Tweet or X now? Well this Fox News piece claims Vance is courting disgruntled Trump voters to form a New Right White alliance after Republican bloodbath. It claims that Vance broke with Trump on post-election messaging, throwing the blame on Trump's relationship with Israel and the Iran War, and is setting himself up as the future of a post-Trump right. Since Trump continues to say the Iran War was worth it, even post-election, former Bush screenwriter Mark Thiessen had only one word to describe Vance's tweet, Disloyal. I was kind of shocked by that statement that Vice President Vance put out. It was, quite frankly, disloyal to the President of the United States. And yet, saddest of all, Trump's own son, Don Jr., agreed with Vance 100%. In fact, the reason Vance is vice president is because of Don Jr. Here he is on the Tucker Carlson show. I exerted 10,000% of my political capital. Such a betrayal, not just from his right-hand man, but his own son. It's reaching Greek tragedy levels. When Trump found out about Vance's tweet, he was furious. Here's his response to a reporter who asked about it. I think it was fine. I thought it was good. Civil War! Also, according to the New York Times coverage, Vance's message appeared to have been made with the approval of President Trump. So is this all just a big nothing? Well, here's the theory. I'll let you decide for yourself. The idea is that these groups, through influential podcasters, possibly with foreign financial backing, have been working before day one of the second Trump administration to demoralize their base. Well before the Iran war, these influential voices were telling their followers Trump was a failure, MAGA was dead, and you need to punish them by not voting. Which is why Nick Fuentes straight up told his followers to vote Democrat in the last election. I guess he was the real winner last week. In any case, when the war happened, it all ramped up. They claimed the Iran War only happened because Israel wanted it and controlled the US government, mixing in conspiracies about Jeffrey Epstein and the Jews along the way. The goal was to make as many people who voted for Trump in 2024 feel like the administration betrayed them and voting doesn't matter, so the Democrats would win the midterms. Just before the election, Tucker Carlson told his massive audience that under pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump administration may be within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran. That obviously wasn't based on anything, but it did get almost 100 million views. Carlson also lays out who the heroes and villains are. Secretary of War Hegseth and the Hawks are the bad guys, and Vance is the good guy. So why would these right-wing podcasters want Democrats to win? Because they're accelerationists. Supposedly, they're banking on the DSA winning the Democratic Civil War, making the party so extreme that the country rallies around these groups and supports a strongman dictator who will at last end liberal democracy. I know that sounds crazy, but there are people who actually believe this. Chase Geiser, a right-wing commentator and author of The Rise of American Populism, said in a now-deleted tweet that Republicans won't have meaningful power until 2032, and the party will look a lot more like Groyper than Boomers, darling. And here's Joey Oliver from the right-wing coalition. Our plan does not require a majority vote. So when I say we will win, I'm not saying that we will win through democracy, I'm just saying we'll win. So essentially, they're the right-wing version of useful idiots. They think that if they get their dictator in power, surely they won't be lined up and shot. But what's really interesting is how this would benefit America's foreign adversaries. James Lindsay says the model is Dugan's anti-West, anti-American multipolarity plan. Now, Alexander Dugin is a Russian nationalist philosopher and political theorist. He basically argues that the world should be divided into spheres of power. The US stays in its backyard, Russia in its, and China in theirs. Strange, that's basically what Tucker Carlson is arguing now. We can no longer be the sole author of terms, of commerce, of anything. We have to share power. With China? Of course, because of their scale. And surely, once the US retreats from the world stage and focuses on America first, those other authoritarian regimes would be perfectly content to never undermine the US. Dugan is also in particular interested in Vance. Last December, Dugan wrote an essay on Trump's second term. In it, he called Vance the common denominator holding the movement together, from Bannon and Carlson to the Silicon Valley money. He named Israel the main obstacle, and he framed the split this way. America first or Israel first? It's kind of crazy that the talking points of many on the right are identical to the guy nicknamed Putin's brain. This is from 2025. In fact, Dugin has been very pleased with what's happening in the GOP post-midterms. He reposted the calls for Trump to resign and Vance to take over. He's been really, really busy. Now, does any of this hold water? I mean, just because someone thinks Iran was a mistake, is worried about the Epstein class, and has soured on MAGA, doesn't mean they're involved in a grand conspiracy to make Nick Fuentes president. Couldn't the simpler explanation just be the neocons lost? But you can see the pattern. Your vote doesn't matter, repeated for a year. As for Iran, many of these podcasters did just lie through their teeth. I'm not going to tell you what to think about the war, but the administration did have actual reasons that went beyond Bibi told Trump to do it. Here's Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He could not allow them to reach a point where they had so many missiles, so many drones, and so many weapons that you couldn't do anything militarily about their nuclear program. That was basically North Korea's strategy. And it worked for them. But these podcasters have a much bigger reach than the administration. How often did you hear them talk about Iran's ballistic missiles? I was talking about it days before the war even happened. One of the administration's key demands was limits to Iran's missile program. Iran's nuclear program is dangerous, but it's also theoretical. Iran doesn't have a nuke yet. But Iranian missiles? Those are very real, and they work. During last year's 12-day war with Israel, Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israeli cities. And a significant number of them got through, in spite of Israel's missile defense. Buildings were destroyed and around 30 people were killed. These missiles are just about the only kind of deterrent Iran has left. Sadly, I don't have the reach of Tucker Carlson. Like and subscribe. That's of course not even talking about the whole China angle. So, presenting the Iran war as just neocon Zionism is dishonest. So that's the coup theory laid out for you. Now for the counterinsurgency. I've seen reports that some in the administration are happy this happened because it exposed this new right element and now they can be purged. And Hegseth, the guy made out to be the villain in all this? The day after Vance's tweet, he simply wrote, Patriots in control. Which was an old QAnon slogan. Haven't thought about them in a while, have you? And then a major Putin ally posted another foundational QAnon slogan. I just can't. Look, I just want to say, I'm so, so disappointed in all of you. If you had just voted for the America Uncovered official 2024 presidential endorsement, Chris Christie, we wouldn't be in any of this mess. Which is why I'm happy to announce America Uncovered's official 2028 presidential endorsement, Chris Christie and VP Jeb Bush A phoenix rises from the ashes. What do you think? Leave your comments below, I do read them. Now episodes like this aren't easy to make, and I'm certainly not getting any of that Qatari money. So please support the show by subscribing to my own website, AmericaUncovered.tv. Just click this button here. And remember, please clap. Once again, I'm Chris Chappell. See you next time.